Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record also this other:  that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little turned-down:  a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful—­Confidence.

She did not say anything:  so I went on.

‘I have thought long,’ said I, ’and I have made a plan—­a plan which cannot be effective without your consent and co-operation:  and the plan is this:  we go from this place together—­this same night—­to some unknown spot, some town, say a hundred miles hence—­by train.  There I get two motors, and I in one, and you in the other, we separate, going different ways.  We shall thus never be able, however much we may want to, to rediscover each other in all this wide world.  That is my plan.’

She looked me in the face, smiling her smile:  and the answer was not long in coming.

‘I will go in the tlain with you,’ says she with slow decisiveness:  ’but where you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently wait till my God convert you, and send you back to me.’

‘That means that you refuse to do what I say?’

‘Yes,’ said she, bowing the head with great dignity.

‘Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,’ said I, ’but like a full woman now.  But still, reflect a minute....  O reflect!  If you stayed where I left you, I should go back to you, and pretty soon, too:  I know that I should.  Tell me, then—­reflect well, and tell me—­do you definitely refuse to part with me?’

The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm: 

‘Yes; I lefuse.’

I left her then, took a turn down the path, and came back.

‘Then,’ said I, ’here are two matches in my grasp:  be good enough to draw one.’

Now she was hit to the heart:  I saw her eyes widen to the width of horror, with a glassy stare:  she had read of the drawing of lots in the Bible:  she knew that it meant death for me, or for her.

But she obeyed without a word, after one backward start and then a brief hovering in decision of thumb and forefinger over my held-out hand.  I had fixed it in my mind that if she drew the shorter of the matches, then she should die; if the longer, then I should die.

She drew the shorter....

* * * * *

This was only what I should have expected:  for I knew that God loved her, and hated me.

But instantly upon the first shock of the enormity that I should be her executioner, I made my resolve:  to drop shot, too, at the moment after she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon her, and half by her, so that we might be close always:  and that would not be so bad, after all.